Combine creating the u. K. s biggest internet and phone operator. And decision at don. The bank of england makes a rare earlymorning rate announcement imminently. We will speak to governor bailey leader on today about that decision, but a mission to china. The who considers investigating the source of the coronavirus as britain prepares to ease parts of its nationwide lockdown. Just under an hour away from the start of cash equity trading across europe. Lets take a look at where futures are trading. Actually, are we getting bank of england headlines now . Are. Yes, we bank of england votes unanimously to maintain its benchmark Interest Rate, to keep it unchanged at 0. 1 . No change in the kiwi program and no change in the Interest Rate. The pound is Holding Steady against the u. S. Dollar as a way there had been increased volatility in the pound heading into the decision. We are also getting a lot of indecision over how the expectations for how the coronavirus will hit the u. K. Voted 72 on the asset purchase facility decision. The bank of england says the u. K. Payment date sees a 30 drop in consumption, which gives us a sense of some of the metrics they will be or have been building into the forecast. Housing Building Activity has practically ceased. Business investment about 50 below normal in the Second Quarter. Two policymakers voted to increase the qa target by 100 billion pounds, so that is voting 72. The net result was no change in the target, but two dissenters did vote to increase that target by 100 billion pounds. I have seen some investors suggesting the qe program should be increased. They are also saying the bank of england has enough capital to absorb losses. We will see if we get any further insight into scenarios around growth, of interesting to see, they are talking about consumption in the u. K. , one of the sort of highfrequency data points i guess they are looking at. A lot of other breaking news lets breakgh, so out this bank of england story a little bit. I80 have i. E. D. Coming out saying it plans to return to a meaningful schedule in july. Its got aand saying return to meaningful service, i guess, and july. It is accessing the u. K. s coronavirus Corporate Finance facility. Getting help from u. K. Corporate finance facilities. We know they have already taken help from spain or are already at least signed up for that, so a little bit more there, and we got more on german industrial production. It is worse than had been expected. German march industrial output l 9. 2 . The estimate was for a 7. 4 drop, but we are seeing data worse than expected as analysts and economists just dont bother, i think, to update their forecasts because they are more interested in looking ahead. In any case, german industrial output down 2. 9 . Anna corporate reporting out of london, overall in line with expectations, but it is what they are doing to the dividend that will be meaningful to investors. All dividends for 202021 suspended. They hope to resume or expect to resume the dividend in 20212022. They are also providing no so yete for 20202021, another company stepping away from its guidance. We are also getting other details coming through. We believe that story there and get back to the bank of england. Simon kennedy joins us now. Really interesting to see no change at the bank of england, basically, but there were two dissenters who wanted to do more now. Yes. Obviously very active, very aggressive and recent weeks. Economy. To support the i think that would be a debate that will be continued throughout and coming weeks about if that qe Program Needs to be revisited. Incoming weeks. Maybe theyoks like will take their time and wait a little. They do say u. K. Gdp is going to rise 15 in 2021. What do you think about the forwardlooking statements coming out of the bank of england . [indiscernible] obviously, it depends how hard the fall is this year, so there will be questions about 2021 cuts later. A lot of it depends on how the recession goes. Anna it does look like they have been running scenarios in the bank of england. They talk about an illustrative scenario and also talk about how the bank of england scenario has a sharp slump with slow recovery. They will be making their own assumptions about how long the in variousy remains parts locked down and for how long consumers wont want to go out for coffee shops and restaurants even when they are open and the impact this will have on the economy. When you get a sharp ,emporary slump, slow recovery there are the hopes they would be avshaped rebound. Those bets those bets are now off, very much, the discussion now. Will grinde we higher, recapture the trend of where we were. Part, as you say, consumer. Ehavior is going to change Companies Might not be quite ready to boost spending. Its going to take a while to dig out. Matt thanks very much for joining us. Simon kennedy there, bloomberg talking aboutor the bank of england news we have coming across the terminal. We will continue to follow for you the effect that is having on the pound. It has come down pretty sharply since these headlines hit the wire. Had been up im sorry, it has come up against the dollar. Im looking at it down against the euro, pretty sharply since the headline it had been trading down against the dollar earlier, and now it is back up to 1. 2364. We continue to bring you numbers related to bank of england. We bring you also an interview with bank of england governor Andrew Bailey at 12 00 p. M. , noon u. K. Time today, so that is one you dont want to miss. We have on this program a jampacked schedule of ceos to talk to you today. Euroe going to talk to the euronav ceo talk about the companys earnings. A lot coming here on the european open. Matt welcome back to the european open. We are still about 47 minutes away from the cash open. Across europe, you can see futures are pointing slightly higher. Not huge jumps for the ftse and about. 1 a 5 . P lets get to bloomberg first word news. Your top stories off of the bloomberg terminal, starting with the world health organization. It is considering a new mission to seek the source of the coronavirus outbreak in china. Medical exports experts are calling for a trip to discover the animal origins of the pandemic as the white house says there is evidence the virus came from a lab in wuhan. Intelligence agencies are casting doubt on that theory. China has also repeatedly denied the claim. Blackrocks larry fink has a stark message for investors things are likely to get worse. He sketched a grim outlook for Corporate America including mass bankruptcies, empty planes, and an increase in the Corporate Tax rate to as much as 29 . He says theres a risk the outbreak will be severe enough to leave a longlasting impact on the american psyche. Vetoednt trump has legislation that would limit his power for military action in iran. He describes it as a very insulting resolution. It would have required congressional approval for engaging in hostilities against tehran. It comes after a u. S. Air strike killed a top iranian general earlier this year, and the veto was, of course, expected. Now, the oil glut has been good. Or tankers the surplus has to be stashed somewhere, and that is often on supertankers that are floating in the water. One company that benefited is euronav. Its fleet is dominated by crude carriers. It reported its revenue for the quarter beat analyst estimates. The company ceo joins us now. Let me start by asking you after so much of your capacity you havetaken up, do any Storage Space left . Yes, of course. I mean, good morning to you all. We have 72 tankers, and only a have been taken. Seeave about 815 deals who they can carry about 2 Million Barrels each, and about 100 of those vessels have been taken in one way, shape, or fashion, so theres plenty more capacity. Anna good morning to you. Plenty more capacity that seems to contrast with all the headlines we saw recently about storage maxing out. As it were taking into account your facilities . Thats correct. Read the headlines about Storage Capacity, most of them are talking about land Storage Capacity because this is exceptional. Matt but is there any reason to be transporting oil to refiners . Dont refiners have more oil than they can deal with already . Correct. Most refineries have cut their imports of oil. Lets not forget that the world in normal circumstances is consuming about 100 billion barrels, and at the moment, the is low, butetrol you still have 75 Million Barrels, all of which need to be transported. We need about 40 we believe about 40 still needs to be transported, so there is still quite a bit of demand. Anna what is happening to tanker rates at the moment . How do you expect those to evolve . Beennker rates have extremely volatile since the beginning of the year. You have seen fantastic results in q1. We have also shown what we have done so far in q2, and in q2, we are 95,000 a day. The margin is absolutely phenomenal. We are now between 50000 and 60,000. In some groups, we continue to book those. Its very volatile and difficult to predict. If the amount of capacity taken by storage would increase, and feedusly the remaining would probably go back to these , which are 80,000, 90,000, 100,000 barrels a day. Matt i see you have a dividend of . 81 right now. The rest of your profits, will you plow back into new tankers . Do you think you can be buying back shares . What is the outlook . Yes, we always have different options where we can buy back shares if we are not happy with the price. Thats in addition to the 20 nonsense of dividend we still need to disperse, so about 1. 10 would be distributed in the month of june. That represents the healed that is more than 10 , so the share price should trade much higher. We live in a world where most stocks have been affected, so we are thinking about share buyback. Now is probably not the time to buy huge tonnage simply because when youre booking those phenomenal results, the value of those ships are going up and we prefer to become cyclical. Earlier this year when the values of those ships were much who booked for ship resale. We booked some of them for the beginning of the year, some early next, and we also took advantage of the markets and the great value for tankers to sell all the tonnage. Vessels. Aining they are awaiting assets. Their lifetime is about 20 years. We sold 4 vessels three vessels, sorry, which were 15, 17, and 19 years old, and got back to higher value to do that, so this is good recycling of our vessel. As of our profits goes dividends. 20 is used to continue to but at timehe fleet to offset the factory to us. Anna thank for giving us the latest this morning. The ceo of euronav talking about the numbers on the volatility seen in oil prices. Certainly good for some of the market. Up next, we will stick with the energy theme. Coming up, we will hear from the ceo of ecuador next. This is bloomberg. Of equinor next. This is bloomberg. Anna welcome back to the European Market open. Profits dropping 63 in the First Quarter after oil prices of the under the weight coronavirus pandemic. Joining us now, the ceo of equinor. Rate to see you, as ever. Havedo you think you will some idea about how much you plan to produce this year . Is an extra it ordinary situation. We have the covid situation. We have containment on top of our production. Focusing a lot on value over volume to put it that way. We have to adapt to the market situation, how we look at markets going forward, so that gives us much uncertainty. Preciseot able to give guidance for this year, but we have delivered 3 production increase in the First Quarter, back with come further guidance when we have more confidence, both on the flexibility we are adjusting to containment we have to address in our growing business. Matt what kind of curtailment do you have to address from the norwegian governments decision to cut output across all fields . How is that going to affect your field . We really dont know yet. The government has indicated that 200 50,000 barrels a day containment for june and one hundred 34 in total for the second half of the year, but they have made no decision as to how to allocate these, so there will serve there are certain fields that will not be included, but how it is to be allocated remains to be seen. For the government, we expect them to come out and provide more detailed guidance on that. Anna what support do you hope for, expect from the norwegian government . Clearly there is a conversation around production levels that you talk about, but they concern some tax, i understand. Are you calling for any other assistance . Yes, there is the oil and gas industry. Can speed upre you production. That is a discussion that has been ongoing. There have been proposals from the government we are not at all happy with. Hopefully we will end up with an adjustment that will give us both increased liquidity and stronger profitability and some of the projects ahead of us. This is really to increase volatility. We need them to go handinhand with suppliers so we can go together into, you know, into the future. We need that capacity intact. Matt thanks very much for joining us, talking to us briefly about earnings and expectations for the future. Coming up, i hg sees revenue for available rooms slump as coronavirus crushes the travel industry. We will speak to the Hotel Operator ceo next. This is bloomberg. Anna welcome back to the European Market open. Half an hour to go to the start of the trading day. Revenue per available room slumped as the coronavirus crushed the travel agency. The Hotel Operator whose brands include the intercontinental, crowne plaza, and holiday inn brands continues to see disruption to travel in the months ahead. Joining us now is the company gs ceo. As bad as the First Quarter might have been, how much worse will the Second Quarter be . Thank you very much for having me here. It has been an incredibly challenging time for this industry, unprecedented as people have said, and im proud of how our colleagues have reacted around the world to look after customers and the safety of our colleagues in the hotels and work with our owners. As you noted, we had a good start in january and february. Revenue was down 50 in march, 80 in april, and thats a fairly consistent trend around the industry. A very, it looks like challenging time. We have limited visibility on what will happen in terms of Revenue Growth because it is all contingent on what happens with lockdowns, what happens with hotels being allowed to reopen in many countries, and what happens with travel, but it is a longterm investment you make in real estate deals. We have been through this challenge in the past, and it is a very resilient business. We are confident and are right now positioning our company to get through the next few months, the next challenging time frame, and working with our owners and colleagues around the world to make sure they get through this. Matt we have heard now from iag as well as ryanair that they see a return to relatively normal flight schedules in july. Is that sort of on par with when you expect people to come back and rent rooms in your hotels . Well, right now, our occupancies are in the mid20s around the world, too, so people think there is no one staying in hotels, but actually, people are staying in hotels and traveling for business. We are actually hosting frontline workers in many places around the world, too, so we have people staying in our hotels today, and we are seeing interest and demand going forward. It depends on what happens with the end of the lockdown and how people are able to go back to work. It varies around the world. In Greater China where it is further ahead in terms of progression in terms of how it has handled the virus, our teams are back in the office working. All open andmost we are seeing a slight return of demand. Hotels in china and vietnam were almost full over the labor day holiday. There is that rise in demand and interest in travel, but its going to take a wild. We had limited visibility, and i think what will come back first is domestic is an as is and that is principally what i hg has. Our businesses are basically domestic. Big business in the United States. In the u. K. , and Greater China, australia, places like that, too. Those mystic businesses will recover faster, i think, than the international. Leisure will come back, too, because people have an inherent desire to travel and really want to get out in the summertime once the lockdowns are lifted. Anna can i ask about revenue per available room . You talked about it dropping in the First Quarter. Ars was suggesting that revp will not return to 2019 levels until 2024. Clearly nobody has a crystal ball, but what are your expectations around that . Yeah, i was on a ceo roundtable on zoom the other day and we were all talking about this, and we said all of our crystal balls are a bit murky at the moment. Candidly, im not really sure when revenues will recover. We do fundamentally believe, having been through the financial crisis and having been through 9 11, there was a real shock to the demand for a period of time, and then the industry did recover. 9 11, no oneer thought people would get back on planes, but we got used to taking our shoes off and going through security and not meeting friends and loved ones at gates. The same thing happened after the financial crisis, too. I think it will come back, but it will take time. You think about how it will progress. Domestic travel come back before international travel. Theill ramp back over coming years. Someone asked me the other day i was talking to a very good friend you know, is this the end of travel . Is Technology Going to replace this . Teams may replace conference calls, but its not going to place replace big events and it definitely does not replace leisure travel. Visibility, but we are wellpositioned as a company to get through this the next few years. Matt correct me if im wrong, but you have a lot of franchisees who are operating, some of them with 80 drops in revpar this quarter. Are they having cash flow problems . Are they reaching out to you f